


lonely black euphoria and binary starlight bliss

by dancinbutterfly



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - BDSM, Alternate Universe - Canon, Bonding, Canonical Child Abuse, Claiming, Confessions, Consensual Underage Sex, Dom/sub, Dom/sub Undertones, Dominance, Dubious Underage Content Offscreen Only, Eager Sub Michael Guerin, Empathic Bond, Empathy, Enthusiastic Consent, Everyone’s Underage at the Same Time Mostly, Face-Fucking, Finger Sucking, First Time, Forehead Touching, Gay Sex, Gentle Dom Alex Manes, Hair-pulling, Hand Jobs, Heterosexual Sex, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Intimacy, Kissing, Kneeling, Light BDSM, Light Bondage, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Mating Bond, Multi, Non-Sexual Submission, Obedience, Oral Sex, Orders, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Power Dynamics, Power Exchange, Praise Kink, Psychic Bond, Restraints, Service Kink, Service Submission, Submission, Tags May Change, Touching, Trust, Unintentional Scening, Warning: Involuntary Enjoyment of Abusive Circumstances, a dysfunctional disaster getting properly dicked down in the softest sweetest way, enter at your own risk
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-01-31 17:53:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18596413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinbutterfly/pseuds/dancinbutterfly
Summary: There's a something inside Michael, an unearthly desperation that all three of them possess, that calls out to be satisfied. As far as he's seen, it's something he can only get by giving in and handing his will over to someone else. Humans have correlaries in their BDSM games but humans don'tneedit the way they do, to be stay sane, to be whole. It's another alien thing that keeps Michael from feeling at home in this world.And then he meets Alex.[The BDSM AU no one asked for where the all the 47 Crash aliens are have biologically determined D/s dynamic while humans are just human. ]





	1. Letting me get hold of the sweet spot by the scruff of your

**Author's Note:**

> _“She’s experimenting on him.” “Please say sexually.”_
> 
> _“I want to fuse your skin into my skin.”_
> 
> Look a BDSM sex!alien AU was inevitable. Somebody needed to write it and since no one else was doing it, I had to.
> 
> At this point there is no full-on Scening and no safe-words in place at this time.

From the day he came into contact with humanity, Michael takes what he’s given.

He bears it.

He doesn’t like it.

But.

When this foster parents in Sante Fe did meth and hit him, it isn’t as bad as it should have been. He could tell that if things were a little different, somehow a little more or a little less, he might not have minded, might even have liked it. And sometimes, they even gave him clear instructions that he was able to follow and when he did what they told him Michael felt a sort of strange ease that was no replacement for the whole where love should be but was definitely something. He couldn’t figure out why any of that was happening and where it came from but it came from people who didn't want him or like him and it didn't fit with their intent and that was scarier than the any of the actual beatings. He told his social worker about the "strange bad smells" with a specificity he never used to tell her about how they laid hands on him when she called to do a check-in and she pulled him out less than a week later when an inspection found their meth lab.

And when he’s eleven, he comes back to Roswell to find Isobel and Max safe and sound with the Evanses and ends up with a couple who think that the power of Christ can and will fix everything. He thinks they’re fucking nuts and they’re way fond of solving hyperactivity with a backhand, a cigarette burn, and belt. They make him pray all the time and when he argues with them about the Bible because of what he knows to be true because he reads books and he knows a lot of about science, things escalate to screaming. He doesn’t have the best control and things don’t always stay where they should. Every time it happens, they accuse him of having a stain on his soul. Eventually, they drag him in front of their pastor and try and get him to confess. He sits through the Bible counseling session with his arms folded over his chest fighting the urge to tell the man everything not because he wants to but because he needs to. It’s a close thing but he doesn’t crack. A week later, his foster mother says he’s an evil little boy at the dinner table and he tells her to get fucked. His foster father smacks him across the mouth and he sends a casserole dish flying across the room with his rage and hurt and it’s the last straw. They lock him in his room, hammering two by fours into the door frame because they know he can crack any combination or padlock they try to put on a door and call in an exorcist from out of town. 

The exorcist is a very tall white man who speaks with an Arkansas twang that reminds Michael of Bill Clinton. His suits are all different colors and his shoes are black and shiny and always wears a bolo tie with a crucifix on the ornamental clasp. He doesn’t give his name, “Don’t you worry about that, Mister is just fine if you need me,”calls him Mike even though that’s not his name and he pets his head like he’s a dog. 

His hands are gentle in his hair, and they feel big and warm on his when they land on his shoulders. He’s actually kind of nice when he guides Michael back into his bedroom with his foster mother hovering beside him. He doesn’t shove, doesn’t push, just moves him along where he wants him to be. It feels good to go where he’s put even if that’s onto his own bed. His breath catches in his throat as Mister assures him, “We’re gonna fix you right up, Mike, just you wait and see.”

It occurs to Michael that he should fight when this quack ties his wrists to the bed’s iron legs spread-eagle. He should work himself free when his ankles are bound together and then anchored to the frame so he can’t kick and he knows it. He should unknot the ropes and run, but once they’ve got him bound, the desire just fades away. Michael sinks into himself, through himself, and out until his mind, his fucking soul goes somewhere else entirely that is still wholly connected to his body. 

He knows that in his bedroom, Mister and his foster family are doing things to him. But the real Michael Guerin just fucking leaves the building like Elvis to travel into some place that is vast and dark and full of pinpoint lights like stars. He thinks it's almost outer goddamn space, the place he’s always wanted to go. In this place inside himself and outside, he goes quiet for the first time ever, just like he’s been waiting his whole life and it comes to him through this terrible nightmare punishment that he finally feels like something in his life is actually how it’s supposed to be. Michael can’t help but be terrified because the screaming in his face, the religious ranting, and the burning on his skin was awful, so awful, he wanted to run forever, but wherever it is that being held down and powerless sends him is the closest to home he’s ever felt. It’s right like Max and Izzy are right, like acetone on his tongue is right, like the glow of the pods are right and he knows he needs to get out because something that right that makes him that vulnerable to humans is not something he can stand these people having over him. They’re doing things that hurt, things that scare the part of him that’s still present in the room with Mister and his foster parents. The things that they do are ugly and leave him burnt and branded and he distantly hears himself crying and begging for it to stop. He knows that he really wants those things to stop, the pain, the fear, the things they do that make him feel ashamed and weak. But he's in no hurry to end the controlled, powerless, obedient feeling that makes him quiet and whole. That he somehow knows he needs to hang on to for as long as he can. The two warring feelings make him feel sick as the exorcism potions Mister shoves down his throat.

When things calm down, he’s in a new foster home and he has some distance from both the whirlwind fever-dream of being exorcised and that awful night in the desert when Max killed a man and Michael buried a body, he tells Izzy. He used to talk to Max but there’s something about the way she talks to them, looks at them, bosses them around that makes him feel like she’s the one to tell. The compulsion to confess his feeling comes from under his skin, in the place where the quiet hides from him all the time. 

She nods and tells him about the way she feels when she takes charge, when the boys in her class do exactly as she says without needing a mental push. She glows and smiles and he thinks she may have missed the point until she mentions feelings outside herself, of feeling of “I don’t know, like I’m supposed to do it, like it’s the only time that my skin actually fits my body.” He realizes that this may be like their powers, pieces of the same whole that work differently. He’d rather have hers, yet again. He’s felt that way about her life and abilities so many times that it feels like his natural state by now.

It gets more intense when he’s older and he starts noticing girls. Or rather, girls start noticing him. They’re older than he is at first. 

It starts with Annie Martinez. He’s a freshman, Annie’s a senior and they’re in first block Analytical Geometry together. He’s breezing through it because he’s been doing this shit since he was about nine and she’s struggling so obviously it hurts to watch. He can’t stop himself, he has to point out that she’s confused sine with cosine, it’s just too sad. She isn’t annoyed or upset, she just asks for more help and so he walks her through the equation and when he’s done, she smiles and says “You should come over and help me study some time. Give me your phone.”

He obeys because doing what he’s told when he’s being smiled at like that feels right like that. She texts him at lunch _[come over @ four]_ with an address and the lack of question or doubt sets off a buzz under his skin that reminds him of the build up to using his power. He goes because he’s curious and she’s beautiful and because using his power feels natural and so does this and he hates lying to everyone else so he won’t lie to himself.

Annie actually does want help studying. She is shit at math. The public school system has beaten any affection for mathematical thought out of her. But listens and she keeps up with what he tells her and actually seems to understand what he’s told her. “Stay for dinner,” she demands and he does because she told him to and he wants to obey. She’s thrilled by his acquiescence and his compliance is rewarded with a home-cooked meal by adults who aren’t annoyed by his presence and Annie singing his praises for his help. He floats through the whole of dinner on a trip that reminds him of being high.

They have a test two weeks later and Annie gets a B-. He gets a text that says _[come over after school.]_ and her hands drag him inside the door as soon as he knocks.

She’s taller than he is and he’s never been kissed before but when she backs him into the wall of the hallway his spine melts. She touches his throat and fists a hand on his hair and pulls his head back to suck on his neck and he moans. 

“Come to my room, Michael. My parents are in Alamagordo for work and won’t be back ’til late.”

He says yes. Of course he does because he’s fourteen, horny and eager. He says yes because she’s seventeen, nice, pretty and likes him. He says yes because she didn’t ask him, she told him and that has him pliant as putty in the palm of her hand.

She puts him on his back on her bed and undoes his fly. She climbs on top of him and kisses him breathless breaking only to to yank her dress and bra off over hear head. Her tits are high, rounded mounds with sharp maroon points that hypnotize him and she’s not wearing any panties. She tells him to touch them and he does. She tells him to suck them and he does. She pulls his hair and straddles his hips and says “I want to you inside me, Michael,” and he says “Oh god, yeah,” and then she’s got a condom out and is covering his cock and is sinking down on him. 

He doesn’t know what he thought sex would be like but it’s overwhelming and he can’t do anything but sit there and hold on to her hips as she rides him with obvious experience, laughing good-naturedly with obvious pleasure because of _him_. He tries to move with her but it’s difficult to get a rhythm until she tells him how to move, “Like this, yeah, now put your hands there, and move your hips with me, up, then down, again, and again, good boy, good boy, oh, fuck, yeah,” until she’s writhing with pleasure because of him. She’s gasping because of him. Then she’s coming because of him and she says, “Oh god, Michael, come for me, that’s a good boy, shit,” and he does because nothing feels more important he’s doing what she wants and he doesn’t know how anything could be better than giving her what she wants and when she calls him _good_ he feels like he’s made complete for the first time in his entire miserable life. 

She kisses his forehead and plays with his hair after, perched in his lap, making him feel like a well-cuddled kitten and then asks him to stay for dinner. His current foster family doesn’t really do family meals so he takes her up on it. She bumps his shoulder with hers and they split the meatloaf her parents left her and she clinks his fork with hers. “Not bad for a virgin.”

“Thanks.”

“Can you me with test prep again in two weeks?” She asks, her plate balanced on her folded knees. “I’m terrible in with non-linear equations.”

He knows that this isn’t going anywhere for sure then. He’s just doing a service and it leaves him feeling better than anything has in a long time but this isn’t a date. Annie is at best a potential friend but really just a nice classmate who’s a great lay and a good time. 

“Yeah, of course.”

“Thanks.” She ruffles his hair and pets his neck and it takes everything in him not to purr.

It doesn’t happen all that often. Annie graduates and goes off to Texas A&M but he does hook up with her in she’s in town. There’s Tory, the hippie vegan who has lunch with him in 10th grade, who thinks he has a nice smile and he spends most of the spring casually making out with her under the bleachers in the gym until she gets bold enough to give him a gentle push on his shoulder and send him to his knees and eat her out under her tie-dyed peasant skirts. He’s happy to go, it feels good to be down there, serving her and it’s a habit they keep off and on until senior year because her parents move to California. 

When he moves out of his foster home, he hooks up with a few women who are way, way older than he is, just to have a place sleep other than the cab of his truck. He’s not actually interested in any of them but older women are happy to give directions and make demands. Touch me here, lick me there, fuck me harder, deeper, faster, slower. It’s easy. It’s simple. It makes his skin fit better. The only thing that looks like a fuck where a woman takes charge of him like that is playing music and that’s harder to get. He can’t get his hands on a guitar as easily as he can get someone to take him home from the Wild Pony or to drag him behind the stadium and do whatever it is they want him to do, however they want him to do it, yeah, Michael, like that, just like that because having a reputation for being willing and being _good_ is a hell of a thing.

Max thinks he’s a dog but Max has been in love with Liz Ortecho since before Michael got back to Roswell so, whatever. Izzy, on the other hand, looks at him with worried eyes and a frown that furrows her brow and asks him every couple of months if he’s doing okay, if he’s being safe, if he's sure he knows what he's doing until he’s ready to scream. She does it again when she finds out he’s living in his truck. 

“Yeah, Iz, I’m fine.” Because he is. He’s fine. He’s always fine and he doesn’t really understand what the fuss is about.

“This is something different,” she says with the authority of a queen and he wants to sit at her feet and put his head in her lap but she’s his sister and that would be weird. He wants to anyway and he thinks she knows which is why she says it. “This is something about us.”

“If it’s something about us then why doesn’t Max have it.”

“Max does have it, moron. It’s just not all one or the other for him. Sometimes it’s like me and sometimes it’s like you it's just,” she waves a dismissive hand, “all focused on her.” Her is Liz because there’s never anyone else. “We talked about it.” Of course they have. The Wonder Twins talk about fucking everything even if they don’t want to. “You know what a bossy dick he can be. When he’s like that, it feeds him the way it feeds me but around her, he’s like you, ready to scrape and grovel for her, crawl over glass, lick her feet and beg for her every precious command. He’s just not getting it from any slut that will throw him a bone.”

“Wow, Iz, don’t hold back. Tell me how you really feel.”

“I am. And I’m telling you, this thing? It’s part of us, this need. It’s who we are. I thought it might just be, you know, a kink, something that's just me but but it’s not and you know it. It's happening to all of us and it's changing. You can feel it, can’t you?”

And the thing is, he can. Where before, when he was younger and mostly jerking off and alone, it was something that was helpful, calming, a bonus, it’s turned in to something else now. It’s less like his powers and more like the acetone. It’s a hunger. It’s a need. His body actually hurts if he goes too long without at least a little give, a little surrender. He doesn’t answer but he doesn’t need to. She knows because it's happening to her too.

And yet, somehow, Michael is still unprepared when Isobel leans over and says, “I’ve been doing some googling.”

Michael covers his face and prays for death. This is why he never tells her anything. “Oh my god. No.”

“Shut up. I have.”

“I believe you. Stop.”

“This whole thing we have, humans have this sort of stuff too. It’s all over the place, you know, dominance and submission, the whole BDSM thing, but it’s a sex game to them, but it’s not intrinsic in the same way it is for us.”

Michael can’t help but roll his eyes at that. “You expect me to believe that you think we, what, need bondage games to live? I’m sure there’s plenty of humans who feel that way.”

“Yeah, whatever, humans may say that they need it and maybe they do have to have it to be happy but they don’t _actually_ need it and we do. You _know_ we do. You can’t tell me that you can’t feel the difference between having it and not, when you go start to go without that you don’t start to get desperate for it in your bones, Michael. Tell me that isn’t happening to you lately.”

The thing is, Michael can’t argue. He would love to but he just can’t because she’s right. Maybe, it’s getting older or maybe it’s having it regularly but as he’s made his way through high school submission, as Isobel put it, is something that he’s realized he needs to do the way he needs to eat and sleep and stretch out kinks in his back to exist in anything like a comfortable state. He does it fairly often so most of the time he can ignore it but that doesn’t mean finding an outlet to submit in some way isn’t there like clockwork, just like any other biological function. He’s just managed to put it out of his head until she forced him to look at it.

He stares into some unknowable middle distance away from her and shrugs. She sighs takes his hand in hers lacing their fingers together.

“There’s worse things.”

“Like what? I need do what people tell me to do to feel halfway normal.”

“You could need to be act like a bossy bitch to feel you’re not starving to death. It doesn’t exactly make you a lot of friends.”

“I love you,” Michael says because he does, with all of himself, with a ferocity the makes him dizzy sometimes.

“Yeah,” Izzy sighs. “But that doesn’t make me any friends either.”

The firewalls in the media center are not great but they don’t let him do a lot of googling on BDSM. He can’t find porn and he can’t get any how-tos but he does make it to Wikipedia so he finds out about subs and doms and switches so he knows what he, Iz, and Max are respectively which, hurray. He doesn’t really want to go digging much deeper than that. What few pictures aren’t immediately blocked scare the fucking shit out of him because they’re too much and also they make him _want_ at the same time and just. 

No. 

Fucking no. 

Michael is just not going there. He’s going to study for his classes and ace his AP Chem and AP Physics and AP Calc and AP Government and AP English Comp and AP US History exams and get a shit ton of grants and scholarships and graduate in three years and get into grad school on a fellowship and be a astrochemical engineer and build his own fucking ride off this rock if he has to. He’s going to keep his truck running so he has a place to sleep and keep his nose clean and get the fuck out of here. Once he's enrolled, he can deal with all of this in college where it’s safe to be sexual and weird because that’s what a liberal arts education is basically for. 

And then Alex Manes busts him borrowing a guitar from the music room and ruins his entire fucking life.


	2. I was just an only child of the universe and then I found you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge thanks to the people who let me yell and write at them Shenanigans, Littlecountrymouse and also Nev because she's amazing and SHE DROVE ME HERE!
> 
> Huge huge thanks to anyone who reblogged or comment.Your feedback gives me life and also food for thought that I use when I write. This story thrives because of you!

Okay. That’s not fair.

Alex doesn’t ruin his life just by catching him with the guitar in some kind of narc situation that blows his future. Alex is more complicated than that. Alex doesn’t ruin his life in any single way. Alex doesn’t ruin his life by asking questions that he’s already thinking too much about and asking if the rumors about him are true. Alex doesn’t ruin his life by offering him a place to stay and sharing a piece of his own pain, like that’s something Michael deserves to have. Alex doesn’t even ruin his life by giving him a fucking guitar like the gift of the goddamn Magi, the only thing he’s ever really wanted for himself. No, Alex ruins his life because when he does all those things? He never ever asks. Unless he’s specifically looking for information, everything Alex tells him are always declarations, commands, or flat out orders and they have destroyed Michael’s whole fucking world. 

Alex doesn’t ever say “would you?” when he speaks to him. He always just drops new realities into Michael’s lap and leaves it to him if he wants to enter them. 

“There’s this toolshed out by my house,” he says, no hint of a request but all invitation. He hadn’t asked if Michael had wanted to stay. He’d just given him the information to decide for himself how to use and when he swallowed his pride, tired of curling up on his bench seat and sleeping rough and done what Alex had so clearly wanted him to do, Alex had told him that what he had done was good.

“It’s good that you’ve been staying here,” he says and Michael can’t breathe. It shouldn’t matter but it always does. No one thought he was good, no one thought he was worth having around, even Max and Iz were stuck with him but Alex wants him to be there and it’s like being struck by lightening. 

When Alex gives him the guitar it makes his brain sing like a shot of pure acetone, no nail polish remover fillers. Michael knows, intellectually, with his mammal brain, if his species has those, that the beautiful wood curves and tight metal and plastic strings is not meant to be the perfect reward for doing what Alex was told him to but thats how it feels and for a minute, before he gets his shit together, all Michael wants to lie at his feet and do whatever Alex tells him for the rest of his life. He hesitates when Alex had looks at him and wants to kiss him and makes himself look away because he’s always giving so much, bending so far. He makes himself resist because if he gives in with the guitar Alex gave him in his lap, he honestly doesn’t know if he’ll be able to get any himself back once he starts following Alex. It isn’t about Alex being a guy. It was about how much Michael wanted to submit, to obey, to fold himself into the shape of Alex’s life and make it the home he’d never had and if he does that now, may never be his own person again. Nothing had ever been that large or that terrifying before and he’d flinched first and he’s just not brave enough to lose himself when it could be forever.

He thinks about resisting Alex’s pull. He really does. It’d be safer, smarter, easier to ignore the whole thing. Let Alex think he’s in a gay panic and forget it. He’s got a full ride to UNM after all and getting tangled up in Alex is a dumb move and he shouldn’t but he’s never been that kind of smart. 

Max and his fucking “moments” aren’t the only reason he reconsiders. Mostly, he caves because since he moved in to the toolshed he’s been turning down his usual offers and his body and more importantly his brain is starving to give itself to someone’s dominance and Alex fills the always-calling hunger to give, to submit that clanged inside him with a more satisfying resonance than anyone else had before. He goes to Alex because he needed to Go Down for him, as the websites put it and he started calling it after Melissa from AP Calc literally ordered him to crawl across the floor of the girls’ locker for her before she let him fuck her into the closest thing to relief he ever found, and he didn’t want to do that for anyone else now that he knew Alex was an option. 

And Alex doesn’t disappoint. He never disappoints. The first words out of his mouth once they’re safely in the private of the empty museum are another rock solid command for Michael to lean on, however shakily delivered. 

“Okay. Talk.” 

Michael kisses him instead because his words are gone. The riverbed of his vocabulary has gone dry and this is the only thing he has left to give that can convey his compliance, his willingness, his fucking eagerness to go wherever Alex wants to take him. He can’t help the frantic desperation that rises in him as he tries to lick and breathe his desire and need and gratitude and want and general awe for Alex into the kiss because this is the first time Michael could ever remember disobeying a direct order from Alex and he has nothing else to offer but he just doesn’t have the words. He doesn’t know what to say. He wants to do what is asked more than anything but he can’t, so this will have to be enough, it just has to. Kissing him was the only way he can think of to tell Alex what he wanted him to know, so he figured it was the closes way to following orders he could manage. 

And when he pulls back, Alex seems dazed but he’s soft and warm around the eyes and mouth as the reality of what has just happened settles on him, and oh. Oh, god, Alex is happy with what Michael has done in response to his order, and Michael smiles back at him like an idiot because he’s been good, he’s done the right thing and he’s not alone in wanting whatever this is. 

Then he was being rewarded because Alex was kissing him again, touching his hands to show him without words what he wanted, that Michael was who he wanted. As Alex kisses him back, Michael goes to that place again, the one outside and inside himself at the same time but Alex is with him this time and it’s so strange. 

Distantly, Michael realizes that like everything else about his life, he’d been alone. He'd never gone there with anyone else before. It’s only kissing, but Going Down with Alex made him feel like he was going to fly apart every where Alex’s body made contact him, every moment he sinks deeper into Alex’s easy control, yet he’s never felt so safe. Oh, fuck, God, it is so much better this way. Michael doesn’t know if he can ever stand to go back to the way it was after having this. How is he supposed to be able to bear that lonely black euphoria compared to this binary starlight bliss, now that he knows the difference? 

“I have to get close up,” Alex says finally breaking for air. “Wait here.”

The order shoots through him like electricity. It makes him feel like he’s burning with eagerness to do what Alex is asking of him, to show that he can comply with his commands quickly and well, that Alex’s will is something that he can and wants to yield to but the anticipation also turns his extremities do numb lead and his tongue is suddenly heavy. It’s a work of supreme effort to offer up an awkward “Okay,” without vibrating apart at the seems but he manages somehow without totally humiliating himself. 

Alex tilts his head, a little surprised but more pleased, glowing with happiness so his whole face is nothing but his smile before taking Michael’s face in his palms before kissing him again, slow but firm. “Good. I’ll be right back.”

Once Alex is out of sight and Michael has taken a deep breath to steady his stance in his spot, he is struck with the sudden and gloriously alien sensation that he is consuming the energy of the universe into himself. He does nothing but stand still, waiting like he said he would, yet somehow this simple performative act of submission to Alex’s will is feeding the hunger that lives in his cells and under his skin and between his ribs in a way nothing has as he waits for Alex to come back.

And he does. Alex comes right back just like he said he would and he’s grinning like a loon when he finds Michael standing exactly where he left him. 

“I can’t believe you’re here,” he says with a note of delight that no one has ever had for having Michael in their presence before, not once in his whole life. It makes Michael feel like exploding with giddy laughter and like crying at the same time. 

“I said I would be,” he manages without doing either although it maybe comes out a little rough. Michael means the words as a promise and he hopes it sounds like one. They stand inches apart and all he wants is for Alex to touch him. He wants to beg but it’s still too new, minutes. He’s not that pathetic even if he’s starving, starving for Alex even if he’s just been had him, just been fed by him and is satiated in a way he literally never has been in his whole life. 

God, he doesn’t know what’s happening to him but he feels like his skin is actually calling out for more of what it just had and just like the feeling of being fed, that’s never happened so acutely before. It’s awful. It’s fantastic. This whole day is the best thing that’s ever happened to him and he knows he’s grinning like an idiot, he can feel it, but it’s okay.

It’s okay because Alex is smiling right back, moving into his space, crowding up against him, every molecule in his body calling to Michael’s with bright approval as he finally touches him, smoothing over the lapels of his hoodie in an appraising gesture. “You did. I can’t believe you did.” Alex’s fingers walk up his chest, along his neck and into his hair to pull him close and Michael falls down into himself as Alex kisses him again.

He closes his eyes as he Goes Down so fast and smooth it’s almost falling, but not quite. Alex’s hands on him holding him firm add a control to the descent despite the speed and dizzying distance from where he was to the depths in himself where he lands. There are stars behind his eyes that have nothing to do with the decorations on the walls of the UFO Emporium. They’re exploding into being in his mind in a constellation of comfortable release as Alex’s tongue explores his mouth, leading him down into the dark, loose place where everything feels good and all he has to do is follow.

Following Alex is effortless as breathing. They kiss there, holding each other up like two halves of an arch and Michael thinks maybe he was made to be lead by him because Alex grips his hips and he knows to move forward. He covers his hands and Michael knows to hold him close. He pulls his hair and he knows to kiss harder. He touches his face, skimming over his cheekbones and Michael knows that all Alex wants is for Michael to be soft for him, to look at him and see him as he is and that’s an easy command to obey because it’s what he already wants to do.

“Come home with me.” Alex says, petting his cheek like he’s a wild, furry creature he’s taming with his fingertips. It’s working. Michael feels tamed.

Alex kisses him again, brief and hard and only a little wet, then ducks down to pick up his lame little hat and toss it into a corner, before he reaches out to take Michael by the hand and leads him out. Michael wonders a little bit like what it’d be like to follow Alex out on his hands and knees, like he did for Melissa but across the museum’s concrete and out into the street. It’s so wildly infeasible that it makes his face burn and he pushes that thought down as their fingers lace together in a leash of his own making. 

Alex takes the bus to work or he gets a rides with Liz and walks from the Crashdown so they tumble into his truck which turns into another half hour of making out. Michael can’t make himself let go of Alex’s hand, is the thing. He tries but he just can’t do it and Alex doesn’t seem to want to either so for ten minutes Alex has him backed against the driver’s side door just mouthing at the side of his neck until Michael can get the door open, reaching back blindly with his right hand while Alex pins his left to the metal by the wrist. It’s awkward and strange and the most relaxed he’s ever felt, like he’s meant to be like this. He doesn’t know how he gets the door open. He doesn’t remember doing it. There’s too much Alex and the world going quiet and still. He’s only able to do it because Alex told Michael to go home with him and to do that, he has to get in the truck.

There’s a solid fifteen minutes after that, once the door is open and Michael falls inside, where Alex just climbs on top of him instead of going around to the passenger side, and pins him with his weight to kiss him into submission. He sits on Michael’s lap wedged between the steering wheel and Michael’s chest and presses him into the leather of his bench seat so hard his rib cage feels like squeezes in an iron fist. It makes the kissing better and he likes it like this, being under someone who makes him feel owned, even better now, with Alex who he actually wants to own him.

When it finally occurs to Alex that they’re in public, he laughs and slides into the empty passenger seat, leaving Michael feeling like he’s been struck by a hurricane. He looks over at Alex’s grinning face and laughs too because it’s broad daylight and they’re so close that when he reaches out there’s an answering touch. Their fingers fitting back together in a perfect tangle and Alex scoots across the bench to sit with their hips pressed together. 

Michael watches as he lifts their hands and kisses their interlaced knuckles before tugging them against his chest for safekeeping. “We should go.”

And because Alex says to, Michael throws the truck into drive and goes.


	3. You call the shots babe I just wanna be yours

The drive from the UFO Emporium to the Manes’ home is the longest trip Michael’s ever taken and it’s a miracle he doesn’t crash. Alex keeps their hands locked the whole drive, held against his heart the whole time and it’s crazy how good that feels, like Michael’s always been a balloon but his string is securely moored for the first time. He’s not going to fly away just because he’s drifting towards the sky. It’s okay. He can float without being afraid.

He parks in his usual spot down the street, careful like always, and they trip down the block and into the toolshed kissing. Alex’s hands are everywhere, pulling him closer only to slide under his jacket and beneath his waistband. They’re pushing at clothing and pulling at each other’s bodies until his hoodie falls off his shoulders. It goes on like that for a delirious forever and Alex keeps touching his face as he takes Michael apart with his mouth, like he’s not just trying to hold him close but hold him dear and it’s shattering.

When they break apart to breathe, Alex sheds his vest and Michael reaches behind himself to grab his shirt between his shoulder blades and tug it off over his head like he’s done in a dozen other encounters. He gets it up over his back and stops because no, this isn’t right. This isn’t how this is supposed to go, not between them. He doesn’t know how it should go, exactly, but not like this. 

He drops his hands to his side and finds Alex looking at him, eyes squinting just a little in concern and confusion.

“Hey,” He looks like he wants to fidget or bite his nails. “Is this going to fast?” And shit, all of a sudden, Alex is asking and that doesn’t feel right either. 

“No.” It comes out with less confidence than Michael would like but he does mean it. It feels like he’s been waiting forever for Alex though he knows it’s only been a few days since he really figured out what he wanted. 

“Have you done this before?” Another question. Since when did Alex ask so many questions?

“Yeah.” He laughs at his own blindness.

Fuck, he is an idiot. He remembers the way Alex had looked at him that afternoon behind the bleachers when he caught him red-handed and vulnerable and realizes for the first time that Alex had mentioned him living in his truck and nothing more. Michael has latched on to “all the rumors” being true and when Alex didn’t disagree that felt like confirmation but now it’s obvious Alex hadn’t ever considered past the gay bullying bullshit circling himself to think about Michael’s old arrangement with Tory’s and the Melissa Incident and his notorious availability and all the other common knowledge of What That Guerin Boy Will Do If You Get Him Drunk (Or Just Alone). Since word really got out around Homecoming, Michael lost track of the girls who have approached him to serve as their sexual training wheels before heading out into the real world because he was pretty and pliant. But that’s not what Alex means and Jesus, probably it never was. 

Maybe, even if Alex did know, he’s never factored the desperate slut Michael is into his equation. Michael feels stupid for assuming and raw like he’s had a mile of skin peeled off as he tries to explain what he thought Alex already knew. “But not like with…” he trails off because he doesn’t know how to finish that sentence. 

“With a guy?” Alex offers, trying to pull him from the pit he’s drowning in. It helps a little.

“With a guy.” He agrees but that's not quite it. ‘Someone like Alex’ is what he wants to say but he doesn’t think that translate the way he intends it to.

Alex's hands dart out towards him like they want to pet him but fall away before they can make contact with his shoulders. Michael aches with the absence and more from the hesitation. He tries to bring them back on track, taking Alex by the waist again when offers “And not with anyone I’ve liked as much as I like you,” because that at least he knows is allowed to take. 

“But you stopped.” It’s another one of those statements that digs in and mine everything from him while not actually being a question and that’s better. That’s more like how it should be. 

Michael nods and tries to figure out the right thing to say that won’t send everything falling apart or make him sound like a crazy person or worse, a liar. He can’t be a liar with Alex any more than he can be less than himself. It puts him in the position of having to find the _right_ truth to share and that’s harder than making something up.

He wants to lay himself bare, offer himself up, give himself over. He wants to be honest. He wants to be Alex’s. No. It’s more pressing than that and fuck it. Just fuck it. There’s really only one fact that matters here and he's just going to say it. 

“Because I need to be yours.”

Alex actually jerks his head back a half an inch but only for a second before he's ducking back in, curious and confused and so open and not making any move to step out of Michael’s arms. Michael can't stand the force of emotion that slams through him at that acceptance. He doesn't deserve it but he'll take it. He’s greedy for it and destitute without it. 

“So I need to make you mine.” Alex’s hands returning to cradle his face is a stay of execution. For a few more seconds, he can live in this boy's touch. “How do I do that exactly, Guerin?”

“You’ve been doing it for months.”

“Okay. What am I doing?”

Michael fists his hands in the fabric of Alex’s shirt and grits his teeth. “Stop asking me. Fuck,” he bites off the word trying rip the throat out of his frustration. “That’s not you.”

His dark eyes go wide again, a different kind of struck this time, a little hurt and a lot bewildered. “I don’t understand.” 

And he really doesn’t. Alex doesn’t hear the way he talks or know what he does when he just acts without any hesitation or see how everything he does is a declarative statement. Yet now, he’s suddenly turned into a person full of requests. 

He doesn’t have any concept, really, of the force the gravity his star emits on Michael’s world. And why would he? After all it’s not like stars know what they’re doing to the bodies pulled into their orbit. 

Michael gnaws on his lip for a second trying to find the right way to put it that will get the back where they were, put them where they need to be. The truth has worked so far so he can try it again, remembering that Alex is human and he doesn’t feel what Michael does. 

“You don’t have to ask me anything, Alex,” he offers, trying to keep in mind that Alex doesn’t have a clawing need that crawls from his organs out his pores into every cell of who he is to take the way Michael has to give. “Never have and I don’t need you to start now.” He licks his lips and makes himself be brave. Alex wants him, hasn’t run screaming yet. He can do this. He is doing this. He puts his hand on Alex’s chest to anchor himself and says, “You can just take.”

Alex’s mouth forms a small round O shape and for the space of about ten miserable heartbeats, Michael is caught in his huge, stunned stare. And then he’s being kissed. 

No. That’s not right. His mouth is being fucking _taken_. 

There less than six inches apart yet somehow Alex manages to surge into like he’s only seen when in videos of tidal waves surging onto land and devouring everything in their path, leaving stripped and barren beach in their wake where structures once stood. Michael is lost in the undertow of his passion as it swirls over him and pulls him down, fierce and overpowering but somehow not violent. Rings catch on strands and tug as Alex’s hands fist in his hair holding him still so he can overwhelm him with lips and tongue and the slam of his lean body pressing against own is like being restrained but better because it’s Alex, warm and alive holding him in place. 

Michael moans, low and hungry and pleading into it and goes limp everywhere but his cock. He whimpers when Alex pulls away from him even though its just to yank his shirt off over his head This is what he’s needing. This is what he’s been dying for his whole fucking life. He feels like he belongs here, like he was made to fit in Alex’s arms, under Alex’s hands, beneath Alex’s desire and it’s so easy that he doesn’t have to think. He can lose himself in the roaring quiet of feeling Alex putting him wherever he pleases.

He barely hears Alex say “Lie down and take off your pants,” when they pause to breathe. It’s a whisper and the rushing in his ears as he gasps for self-restraint is so much louder but he does catch it and sags with relief at the simple commands. It’s something he can do quickly and easily and he goes down probably is a lot harder than Alex intended but he doesn’t care. He sprawls like spilled water on the pallet that Alex generously calls a bed and tries kick out of his shoes and to work open at his fly horizontally as Alex peels off his own shirt. 

It doesn’t go so well. Alex is distracting with his chest exposed, lovely and pale because he spends most of his time inside hiding from the desert sun but he’s obviously strong from the distances he travels on his skateboard and Michael drinks in the sight of him. Also, getting jeans off while lying down is kind of tricky but that’s why Alex said to do and goddamn it, if he’s not going to do it. 

Alex’s knees land on the bed a few seconds later with a dull wooden thump, his hands reaching out to help with interfering socks and Michael laughs as he finally manages to get his waistband off his hips and down an inch. Alex laughs too, grinning down at him with delight, light and happy, and Michael’s only really seen him like this from a distance, with Liz or Maria or both and he’s beautiful. He could get drunk on that expression, that sound and it’s what Michael hadn’t realized he wanted before now. 

“Kiss me,” Alex says and Michael feels that helpless-to-resist feeling hit again as he strains to keep doing everything he’s been told. It’s a struggle to lie on the bed and squirm out of his pants and now curl up his shoulders just enough to reach Alex’s mouth to kiss him back but he does it all because he is good and he’s been told and Alex wants him to. The position dragging on his core muscles and Alex’s mouth tastes like nothing but the two of them and he’s doing exactly what has been ordered and all the little out of joint pieces click place, feeding his cravings in one fell swoop. The noise that comes out of him at the flood of cell-deep fulfillment of all these needs being met in one moment with one person is long and high and soaked with lust-addled gratitude. 

Alex hums into their kissing in a two note sound that feels approving. The way his nose nuzzles against his face and his hands stroke his hair feels like approval too. Michael doesn’t stop his work on any of his tasks as Alex’s petting continues from his hair down his neck with careful fingers that come down one at a time to rest over his arteries with thumbs stroking over his throat like he’s doing nothing more than contemplatively strumming guitar strings. No one’s touched him like this before and it’s making his greed multiply even as he’s satisfied.

Alex pulls back to watch him finish shimmying out of his clothes and shakes his head, his expression fond and patient. “I don’t know what you’re doing but its ridiculous.”

“I was just....” Michael begins and fails to find anything but more fucking truth. But Alex has been nothing but nurturing of his truths so far so he gives him another one to keep and tend and maybe grow. “Doing what you want me to.” 

Alex has a hell of a poker face and doesn’t do more than blink a a couple times at that statement but he’s not really unmoved. Michael can hear the hitch in his breathing and his stone mask is no match for the pink creeping into his cheeks and the hard line off his cock through his jeans against his own bare leg. Alex’s arousal is the best kind of reward he could have hoped for and he smiles up at him because he knows he’s been good and it feels like flying. 

“I might want everything, Guerin.”

Michael can feel his smile grow teeth. “Then you can have it.”

Alex stops breathing again and Michael draws his knees up again to make room for him between them. Despite the new space between them, Alex settles easily between his thighs. Michael wants him to live there. “Hey,” he grabs the hair at Alex’s nape tugs. “I meant it, okay? I’m yours if you wanna take me.”

“Fuck, Guerin,” he groans, dropping his head into the hollow of clavicle and neck under Michael’s chin. “I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything else.”

“Ok, then just-“ 

Alex kisses him silent, pushing him down into the blankets and Michael is happy to go quiet again. He needs the pressure and peace of Alex’s body on top of him and weighing him down so he can surrender. His whole body convulses in relief because Alex is going to take what he’s offering. The combined knowledge and reality makes him feel more secure and relaxed than he can remember in his life on earth. Alex has him now


	4. Push me and then just touch me till I can get my satisfaction

Michael doesn’t really take in how Alex gets his pants and underwear off. The force of Alex pinning him down, particularly the pressure on his chest has him Going Down so fast and hard he’s struck with a psychosexual vertigo that sends his world spinning and when Alex kneels over him, knees shoved under his thighs, with one hand pressing gently just below his Adam’s Apple not quite restricting his air Michael feels like he’s come home. Finally.

“Let me in, Guerin,” Alex murmurs and Michael throws open his legs and arms and mouth unsure of which one he means but ready to give him everything. When two fingers slide into his mouth and he closes his lips around them to suck, Alex purrs, “That’s good.”

He can’t stop the moans that leak out around the full feeling of Alex making physical room for himself inside Michael where there’s already a psychic space. It’s so different from the girls who have experimented on him or taken advantage of what he gives to get what he needs. He keeps his eyes open because he doesn’t want to lose sight of Alex even as he finds himself drifting into a sensation better than any drink, any drug, any acetone undercut buzz. 

Alex hums in approval as he replaces his index and middle finger with his thumb for a few steady thrusts before pulling free. Michael whimpers at the loss but doesn’t chase it. He’s going keep being good, to be Alex’s, to take what he’s given. 

He hasn’t been given permission to take any of Alex for himself yet. Maybe he won’t be and if he’s not, that will be okay because where he is right now, that’s not what he even wants. All he wants is to serve Alex the best he can, whatever that looks like.

Right now, that's Alex staring down at him with soft brown eyes that are fond and hot and almost echo the hunger that hollows out Michael’s bones day after day. He doesn’t feel things the same way Michael does, he doesn’t need like Michael needs, but Alex is in this with him and it’s powerful for him too. He runs his dry hand up and down Michael’s side and chest then up his neck and into his hair, exploring, claiming, and Michael arches into it, happy for the attention and so distracted that when Alex’s other hand forms a tight, wet ring around his dick with the fingers his own mouth has just soaked, he’s so shocked he feels electrocuted.

Alex chuckles at him, his body vibrating on top of Michael’s even as the slick circle of his fingers move with barely there friction over his shaft. Michael can feel himself falling apart with every firm stroke of his wrist between their stomachs and Alex is grinning at his desperate pleas, wild and dangerous and toothy, glowing like a coyote smile caught in desert headlights at night. Michael chokes out his name, because he wants to say it, needs to say it, and Alex kisses down his jaw before nipping at his lower lip in response. “Fuck, that’s so good.”

Michael is going to die if Alex keeps saying that especially if he pairs it with this kind of cataclysmic touch. Every time Alex say he’s good he feels like his skeleton’s liquifying and that’s not even counting how close he is to coming in Alex’s hand. He’s going to turn into a glowing, metallic puddle like that girl from that show they used to watch in the group home before he could speak English.

He loses it when Alex finally stops toying with him and kisses him properly, with messy tongue and that pressure back on his throat. His hands take on a life of their own and maybe it’s more than he should presume but he needs to be touching Alex back when they’re this close. He takes hold of that face that looks at him and sees someone good and sobs into the mouth taking him to pieces as he comes. Alex just strokes him through it, waiting as his orgasm takes the wind out of him and keeps kissing him until Michael doesn’t have anything left to give. He’s a sweaty, come-sticky disaster and he doesn’t know what else to do but be kissed and try not to whine at every oversensitive point of contact. 

Alex lets out another pleased humming noise before breaking away and wiping his hand on the blanket. He’s flushed and stunning and looks like everything Michael didn’t dream of wanting and still hungry. Michael wants to be consumed by him until there’s nothing left of him that doesn’t be long to Alex. 

He strokes his thumb over those sharp cheekbones and feels himself smile, silly and sex drunk. “Yours,” he offers because he’s too tired and too happy to be more articulate than that. 

Both of Alex’s hands land on the bed above his head with a startling thud and he draws himself forward and up until his knees are planted over beside Michael’s ears. His body is a crushing weight trapping Michael’s shoulders under his legs and his hard cock, long and flushed and leaking, is suddenly presented right in front of Michael’s face as a prize that’s close enough to see, to fucking smell but too far to reach with his hands or lips pinned like he is. 

Towering above him, Michael watches, comfortably helpless, as Alex’s expression goes positively feral. He sides his thumb back into his mouth and pushes at the hinge of his jaw until his chin drops and his lips part. It’s so easy yield to Alex’s touch. The commands hands give are simple and easy to obey. Open, his thumb says, and he does. The other four fingers rest on his cheek and stroke, petting him like a kitten and he knows he needs to stay, stay, stay. He looks up the miles of glowing skin to dark eyes devouring him and tries to convey that he can hear every whim without a word and hopes Alex understands. He must. He has to. 

Alex pushes his hair off his brow, once, twice, with his other hand, before planting the flat of his palm over his forehead, fingertips reaching from his temple far into his hairline. Alex's thumb smooths over his eyebrow once with a soothing care that burns the last of the tension that lingered stubbornly through his orgasm. Limp and pinned and ready and warm under Alex, their breath is the only thing that fills the quiet shed making and every sound other sound jarring. So Michael can hear it like distant thunder when Alex whispers “Mine,” on something like a sigh before his hips roll forward to push his dick into Michael’s obediently waiting mouth. 

And that’s it. Michael was Down before but now he lands at his personal bottom so hard his brain feels like it's splattered across the inside of his own skull. Michael can feel it, like force of Alex’s dominance over his body and his will is a living thing pouring directly in his mind like water and filling it up. The effect is instant and radiant, a light disinfecting his entire being of the sadness and pain that lives in the deepest crevices of his being. Sure, his mouth might be being fucked but even in the physical, chemical and psychic daze, Michael can tell that what he’s feeling is not about the act. That’s meaningless compared to what Alex is giving him, how he’s dominating him, taking him, and the service and submission Michael’s giving in return. Because he's figured out how to be fed. 

Finally. 

Fucking finally. 

Michael has been starving to death his whole life and as manic energy sparks in every nerve in his body, he knows that _this_ is what he’s been looking for. God. God, he knew he needed to submit but he didn’t know how amazing feeding his need could be until he had it. But now, he lies beneath Alex, hands curled around the back his thighs, taking his cock down his throat and feeling cherished and letting himself be used and owned, and it’s like he’s never been whole before, never been truly alive. His body is singing, alight and awake and shining with a joy, a sense of rightness that nothing has ever given him before and fuck. Fuck. Oh fuck. 

He groans around Alex because the strongest feeling in him as he’s pressed down into oblivion is relief. The relief of the bliss that wracks him is elemental, transcendent. It’s so good he never even thought to hope for it. He’s not broken. He’s not wrong. He’s exactly what he's supposed to be, and his crazy alien anatomy is screaming with relief that he’s at last fulfilling his purpose.

Then suddenly it stops. He can’t help the distressed sound that escapes his throat, a wounded animal noise but Alex is right in his face, sprawled over him again chest to chest, frowning, his eyeliner making his eyes look even bigger and darker. 

“Hey, don’t cry.” Alex mumbles, wiping at his face which is kind of funny because Michael didn’t even know he was crying before Alex said so but he doesn’t decide what happens here. So he just breathes and tries to stop the tears he didn’t know were leaking from his eyes. He needs to do what Alex wants so he has to stop. Has to. “It’s okay.” Alex promised and Michael shakes his head because he’s okay, he was just feeling a lot, so fucking much, more than he ever has before, but Alex just shushes him before he kisses up the path one tear takes from his ear up to the corner of his eye. “It’s okay, Guerin. You’re okay. It’s okay.”

“Then come back,” Michael begs. His voice is hoarse and he's still crying but that's because he feels so much better than he ever has in his life it's like his body needs to let some of the excess elation out. He's trying to comply despite all of that, wallowing in the consuming effort of obeying as he sucks in breaths that are no real replacement Alex's cock and willing the tears to stop. 

“God, Guerin.” For a second Michael thinks Alex is moving away but he's just sitting up. 

Alex's hands are better at telling him where he wants than his his words. The hot fingers curled around the back of his neck are a solid guide, pulling him up off the blankets and into his lap. Michael goes with a sigh, happy to have Alex's hard length back in his mouth, pressing against his hard pallet and at the entrance to his throat at the new angle. Painted fingers twist firmly in his hair, tug at has scalp as he adjusts his grip and starts to move again. 

The act of blowing Alex is more visceral this way, folded over and forced open and starting to drool. It's embarrassing and exciting and every time Alex moans with pleasure because of his mouth he feels more of light from the supernova in his brain suffuse the places inside him that his hunger has always left dark and vacant. This is what he always thought sucking dick would be like on the few occasions he really let himself think about it.

It’s messy this way, his chin getting sloppy wet as he gags around Alex’s dick and the moans that Alex lets out at every pass sound better than any note he’s ever played. One of Alex’s hands lets go of his head to rub up and down his back in a warm counterpoint to his vicious grip that’s a clear invitation to touch back and Michael takes eagerly. 

He’s twisted sideways and it’s awkward, wrapping one arm around Alex’s waist but he feels suddenly anchored, the string of his balloon tied down again leaving him free to drift back up into the void of space towards his real home as Alex moves his head up and down his length. All he has to do is hang on, suck, swallow, lick and he gets everything. Everything he could possibly want, need, imagine, desire. Michael groans around is filled with cosmic energy that is pouring through him as he gives himself over to Alex’s will as he holds his head still suddenly and fucks up into his mouth as he comes. 

Michael takes the flood of of his pleasure his throat in strange, salty gulps. It’s kind of gross, probably the worst part of this whole thing, but he doesn’t try and pull away. He’s too far Down and feeding off serving Alex as chants “Guerin, so good, you’re so good for me, God,” too powerful to do anything but surrender to. Michael casts his eyes up in time to see his head thrown his head back like he’s in pain except he’s smiling and looking at him lost in his orgasm Michael into the vortex of the moment until he feels like he’s caught with Alex in a hall of mirrors that reflects rapture back on itself in infinite permutations that cascade into something new and wholly separate from the original sensations. Michael shakes with the force of it all. 

When it’s over, Alex’s hands guide him away up and away from the mess they’ve made as Alex falls onto his back in the blankets. He’s still so easy to follow as he leads Michael to up to rest on his chest in the aftermath, curled close together in a heap, that there’s no question that the right place to place his head is over Alex’s heart so he can listen to it beat as Alex’s black nails drag back and forth over his nape in the quiet that surrounds them. Michael listens to the steady rhythm of his breathing and heartbeat. They lie together for a long while after that, not talking, just holding each other, and for the first time in his life feels like maybe, he could belong on Earth if Alex keeps touching him, keeps directing him, keeps owning him. 

And then Jesse Manes finds them getting dressed in the still-hazy afterglow and ruins his entire fucking life.


	5. Walk the dead in a solitary style and crash the cemetery gates

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to every single person who left a comment I am doing this cuz yall are just the best <333
> 
> I couldnt do this with Shenagans and nev_longbottom and also Hannah-writes for holding my hand and letting me rant at them and ask a shit ton of questions. Also thanks to all everyone in the meta channel of the Roswell discord for helping me work out the details of this part of Liz's history. Basically this disaster takes a village. <3

Okay. That’s not all there is to it. 

Jesse Manes doesn’t ruin his life just by catching them together and freaking out. The situation is more complicated than that. That son of a bitch and everything he set off doesn’t ruin Michael’s life in any single way. His life isn’t ruined just because Alex’s father goes on the offensive and tries to strangle Alex in front of him even as a rush of emotions - fear, for him, for him, of fierce protectiveness, for him, affection that he’s afraid to call give a name (love, god he’s sure it’s fucking love), for him - rush through Michael in a way he’s only ever come close to experiencing with Izzy and Max before, so intense and terrifying and immediate that he almost lost control threw the man across the fucking shed and into a wall with his powers, never mind that it would murder the guy and exposes himself. His life isn’t ruined because trying a physical diversion gets his fucking hand destroyed in a blur of blood and noise. His life isn’t ruined because Jesse Manes throws him out bleeding and crippled, with nothing, homeless, half-naked, into the street with Alex’s fear and protectiveness and affection(love) still coursing through his brain and body on a level that makes him feel like he’s sentient power line, forcing him to abandon Alex to his father and his red-stained hammer. No, Staff Sergeant Jesse Manes ruins his life by turning his brain into being too much of a mess of physical and emotional pain and chaos to really think fucking tactically about the goddamn catastrophe that comes later that night. 

And Alex is in his brain, thinking about about him, worrying about him, missing him. The feelings are constant, a crackle like background static but when it flares he somehow knows Alex is feeling a specific way about him. He feels the flares he's chugging acetone in agony. His mind is riddled with flares of Alex thinking about him and feeling terror and despair and that heart shattering adoration while he’s moving goddamn bodies. But even with the steady hum and bright bursts, they don't tell Michael anything about Alex's state so he has has no idea if he’s okay either, if Jesse Manes choked him, wrapped his hand back around his throat and squeezed until he passed out just to prove he could do it and the exponentially growing images of what Alex is facing at home is makes him even stupider. All of it together makes him into a goddamn idiot and he’s just good enough at faking it through crises to destroy everything he worked his whole life and still be around to watch it all burn down.

In his right mind, Michael wouldn't spin out a cocooning lie around Isobel when he's never done anything more that avoid or obfuscate to his sister before. He doesn't think about what it will mean and is short-sighted about how to handle Rosa, Kate, and Jasmine. He lets Max convince him not to call the cops and to move the bodies. He claims their deaths, he lets Izzy convince Max to set Rosa’s car on fire. It’s an ugly, awful plan and it makes them all complicit in murder. 

But Michael doesn’t come up with something better because his hand is agony. He wants to cut it the fuck off because that would be better than the solar storm of pain doing a scalding dance at the end of his arm. And the bursts of Alex thinking of him are a distraction that burn away what little common sense he had to spare, so he lets his siblings talk him into a frame up that is goddamn cinematic in its scope and lunacy and then there's no going back. 

Afterwards, everything comes apart at breakneck speeds like an earthquake on a fault line and Michael can’t do anything but watch it happen. Max turns on him, fast and hard and there’s nothing he can do to fix it. The town is suddenly out for Ortecho blood so Izzy is freaking out to him pretty much constantly about what Max might do over, and for, Liz by the funeral, frantic to do something to tie up that loose end and refusing to address any other problem. The void opens fast when Michael isn't able to spend time with his brother anymore, not like they were before, as friends, shoulder to shoulder, sharing space and time, laughing, talking, just sitting in each other's space not being alone in the world. The sucking singularity devouring him pulls deeper when he looks at Izzy and sees how fucking haunted she is, ordering people around with a cheerful desperation to support the bereaved and trying to play it cool as the town puts together funerals. 

And Alex? Alex is still a permanent low hum and pepped daily with a screaming explosion of whatever he's feeling about Michael living in his head. But Michael barely sees him in person besides at school in the couple of classes they share and even then, Michael can't manage to connect. He can always feel Alex riot of emotions being near him for those brief hours, basking in the experience of Alex wanting him, missing him, being scared for him, being sad because of him, being angry over him, caring about (loving) him. It's a torturous kind of pleasure because Alex won't look at him or speak to him and graduation is creeping closer and with it, the official end of everything Michael ever dares to want. 

Because UNM is not happening, not now. He’s prying his fingers open to let go of the dream of a future filled with math and science and people who understood the unfolding puzzles and poetry of equations that ebbed and flowed through his mind. He surrendered hope of exploring the stars and searching for his answers with JPL or SETI or the ISS. He lets go of the sanctuary of a guitar in his lap, the strings vibrating under his fingers, music created with his own two hands settling the anarchy in his mind. 

Every hope or plan that kept surrender-to-despair at bay is withering on the vine and dying before as Roswell mourns their daughters and he gets it. He doesn't have anything else to do but take it. But Jesus fuck, is he really such a monster that he can't keep one thing? 

Fuck. 

Fuck. God, shit, fuck. 

Michael knows that what they did to those girls was awful but he tried. He didn't hurt them, didn't kill them, and in a terrible situation he did what he could to leave as few victims as possible. He failed Isobel. He knows that, he does and even though he doesn’t pray he still finds himself begging anything in the universe that might be listening to just please, please, let him belong to Alex. He just wants that one good thing. Why can't he have one good thing? Just Alex. 

Because Alex wants him back. Michael knows it. He can feel it, not all the time, but when Alex is thinking about him, and that has to mean something. He's never had a connection like this, something like Max and Isobel’s bond, with anyone before let alone with a human. He didn't even think it was possible but it is and he does and that bond is with _Alex_. Alex who claimed Michael as his. That has to mean something doesn't? 

Michael’s grand plan to figure it out involves passing a lot of notes that get passed back to him unopened and wishing he had Alex’s cell phone number as he burns empty hours bumming around town with no homework to do. At this point, with college out of the picture, there’s really no point going to school at all but he is going to finish and graduate as the salutatorian he’s worked so fucking hard to be if as nothing more than a “fuck you” to all the foster parents who said he was worthless, and also to prove to himself that he can do it.

He’s not really content like that but he’s starting to get used to it by the end of the week when Izzy catches him after class on Friday, shoves an old backpack at his chest. “Get changed,” she orders curtly.

Michael frowns, confused by the bag and also by the tug of her command. He didn’t think it could still work on him, now that there was Alex, but fuck if it doesn’t still pull like always although it’s different now. 

Or, no, that’s not right. He’s different. He’s been different since he gave himself over to Alex. As miserable as everything has been (and every fucking minute has been a pure misery) Michael has felt better, physically, than at any point at his life before. 

He can’t explain how it works or why but since he Went Down for Alex and Fed by submitting to him, there has been a definite difference in the amount of energy his body has had to give. The world itself feels like it’s lighter, the colors a little brighter, the air weighing less, the pervasive sense of grey doom that shadowed in corners of his existence easing. And his powers were stronger. Moving the girls and the car had been nothing compared to the usual effort even with all the nova-bright pain he’d been in wearing him down. 

The energy and health that infused him has been fading with every hour that passed. But even with a few days between being separated from Alex and this new, ugly life where everything was mess and his future was a long empty stretch of unknown monotonous desert yawning out in front of him, somehow inside Michael everything is still better than it had been before Alex took ownership and control and given him a way to serve. Knowing that his existence can feel so different from the dull, empty, disconnected shadow it was before, that his flesh and mind has the ability to feel that good, that full, that whole, that alive, has made all the difference. Hope is a tangible thing when he’s Fed and it’s changed everything, even if he’ll never get it back. He _can_. He’s not broken.

Izzy’s order lands on him the same as it always did, the same as any order would but because he is different, the impact isn’t the same. He isn’t so desperate for what obedience gives him that the desire to comply is a compulsion. It’s there, the knowledge that will feel good if he gives in, but it’s not a temptation that is almost drugging like it might have been last week when he probably would have fallen in line without a thought, asking his questions while doing exactly what she said. 

What he did with Alex has liberated him from his own hunger, for the time being. He’s grateful for that presence of mind now, even if it’s left him tied to someone who doesn’t want him as much as he wants them. “Izzy, what is this?”

“One of Max’s shirts. I don’t know if you have anything black that wasn’t a t-shirt and I don’t have time for you to look. We’re going to be late if we don’t get going and we can’t afford to leave him alone to do something stupid.”

Michael still isn’t following. “Alone?”

“At Rosa Ortecho’s funeral. Max has the Jeep so I need you to drive me.”

“What the fuck? Izzy, we can’t crash a funeral.”

“We can and we are. I went to the Crashdown a couple days ago to make Liz leave and I thought it worked but she hasn’t gone yet.”

Oh god. Of course she did. Max must have been on the verge this whole time. He almost drags his broken hand over his face and barely stops himself in time. “Jesus, Iz.”

She doesn’t stop just because he’s frowning at her. Of course not. It’s never worked on her before why should it now. “So we’re going to sit in the back with my parents and stay out of the way so that Max can see that Liz is fine without interfering with her and I’m going to check and make sure everything took so that she gets the hell out of town before he does something stupid.”

“Izzy.”

“Michael. Just. Please. Get dressed and come with me. I can convince him to do the smart thing if I can put up a united front.”

Michael wants to argue with her but he keeps seeing her with her hand over Rosa’s face, hurt and angry and scared and totally unfamiliar, looking at him out of her eyes, and then staring at him with horror as she took in the carnage and begged for answers, for help, for anything but what she’d been handing. He finds himself powerless to do anything but what he’s asked and, for once, it has nothing to do with his need to Feed and everything to do with his sister and her frantic expression. He sighs and throws the bag back at her so he can tug his shirt off with his good hand. “Open it for me if you want to do this fast.”

“Thank you, Michael.” She exhales. Michael grunts into the dark cocoon of fabric caught over head as he hears her unzip it. When he pulls free, she’s holding a black Sasquatch-sized dress shirts by the collar, completely unbuttoned even at the sleeves and when he doesn’t try to protest as she holds it open for him to step into like a jacket. She needs to do this and she doesn’t have an Alex so he lets her button him into Max-scented fabric without protest. It doesn’t hurt anything and he can see her unwind as she adjusts the shoulders that will never not be too big for him and feels good as she smooths away imaginary wrinkles. 

Submitting to her care settles him and sends little jolts of energy through his body that are completely different from what he got from Alex but fuel him all the same, make his spine feel a little straighter and his mind feel a little clearer. Bolstered is probably the right word for it. He gives her a smile and she tries to return it but it’s fragile and shaky but that’s pretty much how she’s been at baseline lately so he tries not to worry about it more than he already is as they head to the funeral. 

It doesn’t really get any better once they get to to St. John’s. 

Michael does not have good associations with Christianity and he’s avoided churches like the plague since he was 11. Walking into the adobe building makes him feel like his skin is crawling and he finds himself rubbing the skin on his arm over and over where the husband of the evangelical nutjob who ran the group home had burned a cross into his skin before the exorcist had stopped him, grabbing him by the collar and shaking him so hard that even tied down and sobbing Michael had heard the man’s teeth crack in his head. 

“We wanna hurt the demon, not the child,” Mister had snarled.

“But that does hurt the demon,” Mr. Crazy For Christ had protested, as if branding were a reasonable thing to do to a sixth-grader in any situation. “I’m trying to help you cast the monster out!”

“No. Hear me, you are working for Satan, if you hurt that boy. So if that’s how you think this is done, you can get out.” Michael remembered the way Mister had thrown the man out, bodily, so he landed with a thud in the hall. It had felt good to watch, like he somehow won something, but he hadn’t been let up either, not for hours.

Michael drags his undamaged fingers over the skin Max had healed to unblemished perfection as the sad eyes of Jesus stare down at him from the cross. And he remembers the way Mister had treated the wound with antibiotic ointment with gentle hands and wrapped it in gauze as he explained with a terrifying certainty that spiritual affliction didn’t need physical abuse to be relieved, that the ropes were to keep him from hurting himself if he had a seizure during the process, not to punish him, and that he shouldn’t be hurt, not ever, not by anyone. Even as a kid, he’d recognized there was no small cognitive dissonance in a man who had restrained him and been complicit in his captivity telling him that he shouldn’t be hurt but Mister was also the one who had called CYFD and got him out of there and into a shitty, but secular, group home. Michael never would have done it. He stopped being able to paint people in broad strokes after that. They were too confusing, complicated, doing things by their own metrics that Michael could do nothing but withstand.

Michael actually has found over the years that he can relate to the whole Christianity song and dance in a few ways. Well. One way. The ‘suffer the little children’ shit. He’s used to suffering, has been suffering since he was a little child, just like Jesus talked about. And now he’s good at it. He can suffer without breaking. 

So he endures being in a place filled with symbols of a religion he knows in his bones he doesn't and never will belong to. He tolerates the way the icons and symbols and rites of this faith that made him wonder, if only for a few moments, if maybe he was bad or tainted or wrong inside even though being near them wakes old sense memories of pain and fear and confusion and, fuck, that sticky-thin hope and relief at being Fed for the first time that are all so vivid that his skin is alive with their presence. The walls crush in on him and the air thins and his chest constricts but he doesn't let his flinch show.

That's a piece of cake compared to seeing Max (who won't meet his gaze or speak directly to him which is worse than his hand because Max is part an extension that feels half amputated, dangling mangled but still attached and painful) and Isobel with the Evans. The Evans have made the rounds to Kate and Jasmine’s funerals as well, are upstanding stakeholders in the community, and are always kind to him. They are also cold, pulling their son and daughter close in the pews, physically away Michael in another silent claim that neatly boxes him out. Because while the Evans have never even blinked at him funny, let alone acknowledged that he has any special reason to be so close to the twins, the unspoken fact that they _have to know_ he is the boy they left behind to suffer when they chose their children and took home hangs between the three of them every time they meet. So does the fact that they are adults with what, to Michael, has always felt like virtually limitless power when he has nothing, and yet they have never once offered him an inch of help - not when he was beaten, not when he was dirty, and not now that he is homeless. He feels the distance they place between him and his siblings even more keenly now as they all listen to Arturo Ortecho weep over his lost child and know no one would ever cry like that for Michael.

And all of these things are nothing compared to the sight of Alex, dressed in a suit and an air of devastation, sitting mere feet from Liz and Maria who are sandwiched between Arturo and Mimi DeLuca and yet somehow alone. 

This is a fucking funeral, Rosa Ortecho’s funeral. She is dead because of them. Michael stood powerless while she died and her father thinks it’s because of his failures, because of Michael’s actions, and her sister will never be the same person again without her. This moment is about a Rosa Ortecho and he owes her that respect and time. He knows all of this, really, but all Michael can think of is how badly he wants to break away from the Evans and crawl across the floor of this supposedly holy place to sit at Alex’s feet and do whatever he deems fit to make the world right for him again and Michael feels tears well in his eyes at the force of his longing and rubs the away with the loose cuff of Max's shirt, feeling guilty for crying over the all the wrong things. 

He slides out the far side of the pew before he can sink any deeper into his own thoughts, and moves until he’s standing in the entryway to the nave, only half in the room. He can’t bring himself to leave completely, not when this nightmare isn’t over and he owes Rosa this, but he can’t stay so close to the Evans with such a good view of Alex either. He still feels like an intruder but he will do this, so fucking help him, and from here, unfolded and able to move, it’s at least a little better. 

He’s able to escape into a corner of the narthex once the priest concludes the service and stay well out of the way of the small cluster of mourners as the pallbearers leave with Rosa’s coffin. It’s the worst parade he’s ever seen and he’s glad that no one seems to have noticed he’s gone so he can loath witnessing it in relative peace.

He hangs out watching the mourners leave feeling a bit like Quasimodo from his position is next to the water fountain between the bathrooms. The spot is is far less impressive and substantially less French than a bellower but at least he’s got a crippling deformity thing down. Max had read it aloud to him and Izzy in 11th grade because he actually liked literature when Michael just wanted to throw the fucking book out the window, actually found Hugo romantic when Michael thought it was fucking stupid and depressing that the sad, ugly orphan never got what he wanted and died in a basement, with the corpse of a girl he never got to be with, from a broken heart. He still thinks that but, as he watches Alex mull around with his friends and the few guests he doesn’t recognize immediately feeling distinctly hunched and stalkery, he's starting to get the appeal of the book a little more.

Michael has no plans to go to the cemetery. To do so seems in bad taste, not that watching people suffer in a house of worship is that much better but Izzy told him on the drive to St. John’s that the Ortecho’s had opened the service to the public so he at least had an excuse to be here. Following the casket out of the building to the gravesite feels gauche. He’d presented that united front that she wanted and that’s enough. It has to be. 

He isn’t strong enough to follow this kind of grief out into the world. He’s barely got the fortitude to track them into the goddamn parking lot, though he does manage somehow. Probably because he needs to make sure that his siblings safely leave with their parent’s car. He just has to wait for Izzy to loop back around from checking her mindwhammy on Liz to nod at him across the asphalt. Michael counts that as mission accomplished and waves her off as she makes her way Max and shepherds him into the Jeep. Michael figures that’s must be sufficient. He can unclench some.

By the time the last of the Evans drive off, the funeral party is mostly gone too. The De Lucas trundled the Ortechos into the black limousine and the Valentis are in their patrol cars. The priest is gone too and Michael is ready to make his own escape to his truck when he hears the tail end of a conversation and someone saying Alex’s name. 

“-give you a ride, Alex?”

He spins on his heel and finds Alex standing in front of the steps, hands in his pockets, shoulders slumped, not meeting the eyes of the man speaking to him. 

“I’m fine,” Alex says heavily, not pulling away or resisting the contact. He just sags under the touch. “I’m not going to the cemetery I don’t think.”

“Are you sure?” The man asks, a frown of concern wrinkling his strange Steve Buscemi-esque face.” I know you and the girls are close.”

It takes Michael a long moment of what is almost certainly creepy staring to place the skinny white dude with his hand on Alex’s shoulder as Graham Green and even longer to realize why the town’s resident conspiracy nut would be talking to Alex in the first place and why Alex would be listening in return. Then Michael remembers that the guy owns the UFO Emporium, that he’s Alex’s damn boss which is probably how knows Rosa and Liz because Alex has been a model employee at that freak show for the last the two years he’s worked for the museum. The reality is that Green has more of a reason to be talking to Alex at the funeral of a dead friend that Michael does. 

“Can I give you a ride home then?” Green offers, still sounding worried. “Because you don’t need to be walking across town after something like this.”

Michael watches Alex’s shoulders straighten under scrutiny. He watches his lips turn up into something thin and forced but still somehow bright. Even in moments like this, Alex shines. God, he is something else and Michael is in so much fucking trouble. “No, thanks Mr. Green. I think I’m gonna find my own way.” 

“Alex-“ Green protests and Alex’s body squares up and his jaw sets. 

Michael knows that expression. Alex has made a decision and he’s not going to be moved. Michael finds himself drifting towards them at the sight of that rigid determination on Alex, caught in the pull of his force of will until he’s falling down into the gravity well of Alex’s very existence. Michael was never so bright or fast as light so he had no chance of escaping him. He wants to be crushed under that strength of conviction, bent into whatever shape Alex wants to make him into so long as it makes Alex feel good. 

“It’s really okay.” Alex says to Green. “I can use the time to think. Desert air, right?”

Green squeezes his shoulder then gives it a pat before letting go. “All right. Just take the weekend off, kid. Don’t worry about your hours, okay, I don’t want to see you till Monday.”

Alex nods and doesn’t argue because not even a Manes man is stubborn enough to argue with paid time off. Green walks away from Alex and Michael watches Alex watch him go. 

That just leaves the two of alone on the hot pavement in the quickly darkening twilight. His truck is kept company in the parking lot by a few church vehicles but he and Alex are the only ones left behind now that the rest of the mourners have moved on to the cemetery. Michael knows he’s a goddamn emo music video cliche, lurking in around a church waiting for a boy, but he can’t leave as long as Alex is lingering in the wake of the dead, wearing his pain in smudgy bruises under his eyes that washed out his skin out pale in the darkening sky and grimly matched the black of his suit jacket, dress shirt and thick eyeliner and seemed crushed beneath a sadness that weighed him down like Dickensian chains. 

So fuck it. If waiting for Alex made him come off as My Chemical Romance extra material, then, sign him up for the Black Parade or whatever. Michael could live with being a cliche if it put him where he needs to be: at Alex’s side, ready to give him what he needs however he demands.

Alex clears his throat and rolls his neck from side to side but for a brief eternity, he doesn’t turn back to look at him. The gesture is as much as a recognition of Michael’s presence as speaking to him would be, possibly more because it doesn’t waste anything on the unnecessary. His muscles are tight and his posture is held rigid and every inch of his body says that he knows Michael and acts as a warning that Michael can and should brace himself for confrontation before he turns around and fixes him with an endless, black-rimmed stare.

“What’re you doing here, Guerin?” Alex asks. 

And despite knowing this was coming, Michael is not prepared. The full effect of his eyes, his voice, his attention fixed directly on him again is like being hit by a cosmic force. He can and does brace but that doesn’t prepare him against the heat and velocity of actual impact.

Michael doesn’t have a good answer to that question, never has good answers when Alex asks him things it seems like. So he just shrugs and wishes he had better pockets to shove his hands into but realizes it’s good that he doesn’t. His hand is still killing him, raw meat masquerading as a limb. He folds his arms instead, cradling his left hand in his elbow lets himself be drawn further into Alex’s orbit. 

He stops a step away from him and takes a deep breath. This close, he can practically smell the pull of Alex’s control. He licks his lips and he can almost taste it.

“Everything’s falling apart. I’m a fucking disaster,” Alex says, eyes darting down to the mess of bandages Michael is burdened with, the back up to his eyes and away to Rosa’s new grave. “And the only thing I’ve been able to think about is you.”

“What do you need?” Michael asks, throwing the question into the space between them for Alex to answer as he sees fit. And then, because he can’t stop himself, because he’s not just desperate to help Alex, he’s also fucking starting to get _hungry_ again, he says, “Tell me what to do for you.” 

That’s all he has to give. His offer of submission and service are the only thing he can think of that might have any kind of value to Alex now. But he’s too honest with himself to pretend to do for Alex as he is told isn’t a hatefully selfish thing to suggest when the consuming want has driven every forward step Michael's taken since the last time they were this close, even with the catastrophes that have grown up to distract and derail him. 

Alex’s arms wrap around himself, rubbing his arms against nonexistent cold. His fingernails are still painted black but they’ve chipped in the days since Michael last saw him and the pink of the nail bed is visible. 

They make Michael want to take care of him even more than he already does. He longs to be soft with him, to hold him and kiss his fingertips and up his hands and arms over his shoulders until Alex’s mouth was under his and he was as much Michael was his and he could keep him safe. He feels it like a pulling ache in his joints and a heaviness in his chest that words can’t ever convey without losing some pieces on the way through his lips. 

He wonders if Alex is going to leave him hanging in that silent, aching need to serve, to submit, to give, to belong, to care, to love, to _do something_ when Alex grants him amnesty from himself. 

He nods and looks out at the parking lot and then into Michael’s eyes and says, “Take us somewhere safe.”

Michael has the oddest sensation of being a an overblown balloon slowly deflating and that release of pressure feels like nothing so much as a stay of execution. Fuck. Yes. “I can do that.”


	6. We were never tragedies we were emergencies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always to Shenanigans, nev_longbottom and estel-willow for basically fucking handholding me through this.
> 
> Also thank you a million times over to anyone who reviewed this. I keep posting these because you guys keep leaving lovely comments and that is a fact. Seriously. I'd have given up if not for the encouraging feedback so thank you so much <3

Michael is having a crisis. It’s pretty much all going on in the echoing caverns between his ears but it is profound and it is chaotic and it is his own goddamn fault. He has _got_ to start thinking before he does shit, at some point. Really. One day, he’s going to think, then act but probably not any time soon and almost certainly not when Alex Manes is involved.

His current emergency is self-inflected and 100% circumstantial because the last time Alex was in the cab of his truck, Michael had been basically another person. He’d had a left hand that worked and a brother who still loved him and three girls who are now dead were still alive. The last time Alex sat with him in the cab of his truck as they rode together to somewhere private, Michael had just convinced himself to be brave, that he had nothing to lose, and he was giddy on kisses and success and the promise of something beautiful and new. This drive is something altogether different. 

Michael is a man with a mission. Get them somewhere safe. That’s the order. He can stop when he’s done that. 

The problem with that is, in his whole life, Michael has felt exactly nowhere on this miserable goddamn planet. Well. No. He felt safe with Alex in that toolshed, with the door locked, in the window of time when they were nothing but friends, before Jesse Manes ruined everything. And sometimes, rarely, he felt safe out at Foster Ranch when there wasn’t a human around for miles and he could see straight up into the cosmos to what might just be where he belonged. Problem was that neither of those were practical safety and none of it was useful now.

They sit at a red light as Michael worries the peeling rubber on his steering wheel and tries to think. He’s a problem-solver by nature. This shouldn’t be so fucking hard except that Alex is sitting next to him, breathing and wearing a suit with no tie and the top two buttons undone and smelling like sunshine and sweat and just _Alex_ and unlike the last time they sat in together in his car like this, Michael can feel the echo of Alex wanting him in his mind, being glad that he’s close, caring for him(loving him). It’s too much and it’s going to make him run into a fucking mailbox or something and then he’ll fail the one command Alex was gracious enough to give him. Fuck.

“I don’t have anything with me. I wasn’t expecting to see you.” Alex says out of nowhere, like Michael had asked if he carried condoms and lube on his person to a funeral which, for the fucking record, he hadn’t. He hadn’t said anything. He was just trying to get them away from St. John’s in one piece. 

It is such a good thing they’re stopped. Alex’s voice crawls up his spine like cold fingers on hot skin and then wrap around his neck cutting off his air flow and he needs to breathe to drive. “I wasn't really expecting you to see me,” Michael admits (though he doesn’t admit that he has a couple strips of Trojans in his glovebox that he’s been he’s been working through since before the Melissa Incident because he probably shouldn’t use those anyway, now that it’s getting so fucking hot all the time because fuck, the latex may have melted or something.) 

“Glad I did,” Alex says and his voice sounds like Michael's insides have felt for the last few days, scraped raw and exhausted. His tongue darts out to nervously wet his lips and his eyes dart to Michael’s hand where it rests against the steering wheel as a wave of worry for him washes over Michael mixed with a longing that feels like a punch in the gut but Alex just swallows, folds his arms over his chest and jerks his chin down the street. “We should stop, get stuff. There’s a Walgreens a few lights up on the right.”

“Yeah, okay.” Michael’s foot turns to lead on the gas now that he has something he can do for Alex. It's not even until he's pulling into the parking lot that his brain turns over far enough to figure out what “stuff” actually means. Like, in terms of his immediate future. It means sex. Specifically fucking. Possibly Alex fucking him. Alex inside him. 

He nearly drops his keys on the floorboards getting them out of the ignition because having Alex in his mouth was a lot last time. Shit, he might not live through this. Or. 

Or he'll Go Down to that dark beautiful place where the world can't touch him. He’ll be able to Feed on submitting to Alex's desire and demands and somehow their bond will make his skin fit and his mind clear and Alex will be bigger than the universe and Michael will belong to him and so for a few glorious moments will have somewhere in that vast void he is meant to be the way those religious nuts believe they belong with their Christ, only Michael knows his purpose and place are real.

“Wait here?”

“Probably a good idea.” Alex agrees. 

Alex doesn’t need to say that being spotted together shopping for sex supplies days after his father took a hammer to Michael’s hand and crippled him, probably for life, is dumb idea. Roswell’s a reasonable sized town. This isn’t the only drug store in town, not even the only one in a mile and people talk. 

“Okay. I’ll be right back.”

“Oh, I can- I need a second.” Alex says as he reaches out and puts his left hand on his right arm and Michael freezes.

His touch is flat and burns through the cotton of Max’s borrowed shirt and his skin, so that his bicep aches with heat. It’s an open gesture but it’s holding him in place as firmly as any handcuffs Chaves County Sheriff's slapped on him ever could. Better because he’s got no desire to free himself from this. Michael can feel himself sinking into Alex’s touch, his voiceless order to stay, to wait, and tries to make himself fight when all he wants to do is give in, drop his head into Alex’s lap right here in the parking lot and beg to be petted. It’s like being in two places at once, the physical world where he’s in his truck in a brightly lit parking lot with a boy who’s breathing his air and making the summer air even hotter and at the same time he in a dark metaphysical abyss that he wants to drown in filled with waves of give and take, command and compliance, submission and dominance, everything ethereal that is, for Michael, every bit as real as the seat beneath his thighs and the hand on his arm. 

He manages to keep his head far enough out of the vortex sucking him Down to lick his lips and ask, “What’s up?” He thinks Izzy would be proud, if she knew and she never, ever will. 

It takes a minute for Michael to register that he’s moved, that he’s holding out a twenty dollar bill he must have fished out of his wallet. He’s got one eyebrow quirked in an expression that clearly says go-on and Michael does. He always does what he’s asked when Alex tells him to. 

To be perfectly frank, Michael is not one-hundred percent clear on how he goes from the front seat of his truck with Alex touching him to the nail care section of the Walgreens, squinting in the fluorescent light. That just sort of…happens. He just knows that he was with Alex then he’s suddenly studying the different sizes of nail polish remover and Wet N’ Wild black nail polish and wondering how much remover is too much and how he can get to Family Planning aisle without drawing attention. 

There’s a way he normally would do this kind of errand. It would involve his hoodie and a lot of smiling at the staff and making charming discussion about his grades and school projects that make him seem more approachable than he is and his telekinesis and maybe a few things catching fire if he needs it too. He’s getting away with shit- causing distractions, setting off small explosions, stealing shit - since before he could talk and that is not hyperbole. 

But things are different today. 

There’s a lot of reasons why but the biggest reason is the fact that his hand is still a dying star of agony that is white-hot and just has hard to look at directly. Michael hates having his hand out of commission. He has to be aware of how he’s carrying his hand all the time so that he doesn’t laps into agony and that’s fucking exhausting all on its own but he’s lost a careless channel for his nervous energy. The basic act of existing is more difficult not that he can’t just shove his hands in his pockets or fold his arms or clench his fists or chew his nails without stopping before he starts to protect himself from blinding pain that will stop him before he starts. He needs condoms and he needs lube but he also needs acetone, lots of it, enough that he can get through however long he’s going to spend with Alex. Problem is, he already has enough people talking about him. 

Michael doesn’t have what he needs for a proper shoplifting excursion. He’s been stealing shit since before he could speak and he's good at it. Being a real life comic book character gave him an edge other foster kids didn't have and never would(when he wasn't being punished for it). 

He eyes the a sixteen ounce bottle of 100% acetone nail polish remover and the Wet N’ Wild for a long time before he makes himself walk away. He takes the long way around, passing up Family Planning to walk up and down the aisle on the farthest side of the store first filled with chips and jerky and the soda and the ice cream. He grabs a couple bags of Doritos and a six pack of Coke because, well, if he just gets lube and condoms then this is just a sex run and the cashier is going to know this is just a sex errand and while he’s done sex errands before, of course, but he can’t this time because it’s for Alex and everything is different when it’s for Alex. This way, it’s less obvious and hey, snacks. Having his good hand full doesn’t make choosing a lube easier. He has no idea what he’s looking for, what will make things, well, smoother. Everyone’s heard of KY of course but there’s some organic brand too and there’s water based and silicone based and warming and what the fuck. He just wants fucking lube, goddamn. He’s actually heard of Astroglide from gay porn so he figures that’s a pretty good bet and sweeps the closest one off the shelf and into the cradle of his arm with his left wrist and some telekinesis. He also throws in the twelve pack of condoms instead of the cheaper three pack because he’s a pathetic optimist and he wants Alex to fuck him a dozen goddamn times before they need to leave their safe place. It doesn’t matter that Michael hasn’t figure out what that place is yet.

The cashier is an older woman who is bored and appears to have no shits to give. She looks pityingly as the bandage around his hand as he awkwardly fishes his wallet out of his pocket to pay and scans a loyalty card for him that takes off about five dollars from his total. He’s very polite and asks her where the bathroom is once everything is done and paid for.

“Straight back through the double doors across from the break room. You can’t miss it.” 

“Thanks.” 

Michael blows the surveillance camera as he makes his way back to the men’s room. It’s a trick he taught himself as soon as he realized what cameras were and what they could do. Once it’s out he feels a thousand percent more relaxed. 

Splashing cold water on his face helps too. It slows everything down, brings him back to earth which is good because he knows he’s going to spiral back out into the fucking stratosphere as soon as he gets back out to Alex in the truck and he needs to be sane right now. 

He takes a deep breath, looks at himself in the mirror and for the first time in days, feels like he recognizes himself. He’s followed Alex’s order. He did as he was told. The knowledge that he’s obeyed spreads his body warm and easy like somehow his blood has been replaced with the sensation of taking a hot shower. It’s a lot. It’s so much and he cannot fall into it here, in a fucking Walgreens bathroom. 

Michael has to get what he needs for his hand and get back out to the truck. It’s the next step in his task for Alex and knowing that pushes him forward and out when all he wants to do is drown in his own feelings. A few deep breaths and Michael the bathroom and proceeds to exit the store through the nail care aisle even though it’s not the most direct route, the acetone and nail polish slipping themselves into his bag as he passes, the weight comfortingly heavier as heads out the door. He can see Alex waiting for him in the passenger seat soon as he steps out onto the sidewalk, his face cast in shadow by the parking lot lights shining down as on the truck. 

The shadows get deeper the closer Michael gets. Alex’s face is segmented like a yellow and grey Picasso when Michael gets in beside him. He’s never really given much of a fuck about that kind of thing but goddamn, Alex is a work of art.

Alex gives him a nervous half smile and is a masterpiece. “Hey.”

“Hi.” Michael returns lamely. God he is such a mess. 

“So.” Alex’s eyes cut to the bag between them then to the road. 

Right. Somewhere safe. Michael still needs to do that. The tug of the order is pulling at the base of his skull from the inside with invisible force. He has a couple ideas. A few. One in particular that might work okay. 

“Yeah.”

Michael should have had a drink of acetone before he got in the fucking truck because now he can’t. He has to drive and pretend to be a calm, composed human being when the reality is that he is none of those things. He takes a breath, just one, shallowly, and then takes them out of the parking lot and north on Main Street to the bottom of the barrel motel he’s hit up a few times when it’s been to hot or too snowy to tough it out in his truck. It’s a shitbox at twenty bucks a night but the doors lock from the inside and in his experience, that can be enough. 

God, he really hopes it will be enough. He doesn't have any other ideas.


	7. Be strong and stand with me somewhere beyond the barricade

“Oh my god, Guerin.”

Michael freezes, hip pressed against the dresser. He didn’t think his use of telekinesis was evident like this, pushing with his legs and elbows but maybe it looked weird from the outside? It could be hard to tell what people see. He’d fucked up before. So he scrambles for the right words, words he doesn’t have and never did but wants to find: _I’m an alien, I have powers, please let me stay, I need you, I’m falling stupid in love with you._ He tries to start but his mouth dries up and he sags back against the dresser so far his back hits the door. 

“Alex,” he begins, hoping that it will just come to him, the way words do sometimes with him. His eyes dart around the motel room from the dingy taupe walls, to the puke green carpet, to the small table and single chair by the ancient window air conditioning unit that looks like it could be comfortable but probably isn’t, over to the single queen bed with a hideous maroon bedspread covered in geometric purple patterns. The tired tessellation is only interrupted by Alex, sitting perched at the foot leaned back with his weight on his arms, his hands digging into the mattress and the white Walgreens bag at tossed casually near the pillows. Michael’s eyes snag on his amusement for half a second before locking on the spot on the floor where Alex’s Vans meet the carpet. 

“I swear, if you climb on top of that and start singing Do Hear The People Sing, I’m gonna lose it.” Michael looks up at him and blinks, confused, but Alex shakes his head. “Never mind. Just, the barricade,” he laughs not unkindly. “I think you got it covered.”

“Oh. I...was just…”He rubs the back of neck feeling silly at how frantic he’d been to make sure that no one could get into the room once the door was closed behind them. He couldn’t let anything (Jesse fucking Manes) break the bubble again, not when things were so fragile but he had to look ridiculous, barring the door with shitty plywood furniture. But it made sense as he was doing it. He sighs and drags a hand across his forehead and down over his eyes as he makes himself end the thought out loud. “Making it safe.” 

“Yeah, you did.” Alex agrees. 

When Michael drops his hand, he finds Alex looking at him like he did over the guitar last week but now he can feel what goes under it. There’s a soft feeling of fondness and desire wrapped around appreciation and approval at his work, his commitment, his service. Michael gave him exactly what he asked for. The feeling of gratitude and pleasure and oh, security that flows from Alex drags Michael Down fast and hard. Knowing he did that for Alex is everything. Just everything.

“Thanks.”Alex offers, trying for a smile but it comes off strained and wrong. Michael feels like the hook yanking him off stage because that is not how this is supposed to go. That’s not how this works. That’s not who Michael is. That’s not who _they_ are together.

Michael shakes his head and himself, like he can cast that wrongness off. It doesn’t work and he wraps his arms around himself, his left hand held gently ing the cradle of his right arm. He has to turn his face away to keep from breaking. 

“Don’t. Please, okay? Don’t do that. I just want to do you whatever you tell me,” Michael says, feeling breathless and desperate for that open, beautiful alive feeling like he hasn’t touched since Jesse Manes beat the form out of his hand and the joy out of his body. 

“Yeah, you’ve said that before.”

Michael shrugs like it doesn’t matter, like it’s not his entire life and what little sanity he has that depends on this. Like getting Alex to want hear him isn’t the most important thing in his world right now. “More than said it.”

“Yeah. I remember. Jesus.” Michael watches his fingers, long and nimble and strong, rub over his mouth. “It’s not like I can think about anything else.”

The wave that hits Michael from Alex as he speaks is a combination of longing and lust that hits like a fist to the face and Michael knows from KO punches. He doesn’t know what Alex is thinking about specifically but whatever it is sets a fire in his veins that goes right to his cock and an ache in his bones that radiates in to his heart and back out again to the tips of his toes. He digs his fingers into the wood as deep as he can and holds on as it crashes through him. The force of it pushes the words out of his mouth. 

“This week. I tried to- You never answered me.” He doesn’t understand how Alex could have this much and not even fucking blink at him at school when he was hurting so goddamn much. 

Alex waves a hand at him. “Fuck, Guerin, how could I?” 

“How could you not?” Michael shoots back, feeling wounded in a way nothing else ever has ever hurt him before. “I don’t know, you could’ve answered one note? Had Liz or Maria pass me a message? Shit, I don’t know.” He gives the dresser a little half-hearted hit kick with his heel that is more out of frustration with himself for not being proactive and cornering Alex in the boys bathroom or something before this than anything. “Anything, I guess. You could’ve done anything. I didn’t go anywhere.”

Alex looks gutted by that. Shame, no, worse than shame, fucking grief over him rolls over Michael from Alex like a sandstorm and he hates it. 

“Fuck. Look, Alex-“

“I didn’t want you to look at me and see him.” He replies and, yeah, okay. That makes sense. Michael’s whole body goes rigid and Alex makes a small noise in the back of his throat that basically says ‘see?’ Before continuing. “He fucking ruined things for us and he hurt you so bad just for trying to help me, Guerin, God, and I didn’t-“ He watches Alex blink fast and furious, eyes cast up at the ceiling in a classic move that all kids punished a few too many times for crying learn.“I didn’t want to do that to you. I did enough.”

“Fuck that asshole.” Michael snarls, wanting to rip Jesse Manes to pieces, not for himself but for Alex, just blow him up with his brain like goddamn Scanners. He could do it too. 

Alex shakes his head but Michael isn’t having it. Not for one more fucking minute. 

“Seriously, fuck him. I don’t see him when I’m with you; I just see you. You’re the only thing I can see anyway.”

“Guerin, it’s not that simple.”

“Why not? I thought you understood after last time.” Michael meets Alex’s eyes more out of aggravation and impatience than anything else at this point. “I’m yours.”

Alex stares him down for a beat that goes on for what seems like forever. Michael doesn’t know what he’s getting from Alex, there’s too much of it and it’s too loud and it comes in too many… fuck it , he’s just going to call the emotions flavors because thats near enough to the truth, too many flavors to really distill what he’s experiencing into anything clear through empathy. He just knows that he has Alex’s focus, he is Alex’s, and Alex is registering that, for real, and that is good. 

Michael can wait for that to process, really. He’s been waiting his whole life for a family that is never coming to take him home, for fucking aliens to make contact. Michael can wait for Alex to digest that he has ownership over him. And fuck if he can’t actually feel when it clicks, the moment the longing shifts to possessive wanting and the lust shifts into needing. 

Alex pushes off his hands and leans forward. His black-rimmed eyes cut Michael in half with their intensity. “If you’re mine, then you should c’mere.” 

Michael goes, fast, and lands hard on his knees in front of him. His head drops onto Alex’s thigh and Alex’s right hand pushes into his hair, brushing his curls off his forehead, firm but gentle and Michael goes pliant as playdough. Oh, he’s needed Alex. He has needed to be here for this boy, like this. He’s not going to cry but he could. It’d be easy. 

“God, Guerin, you really are something,” Alex laughs but it’s not a light carbonated laugh like the one from the last time they were like this. It’s heavy and presses down on Michael’s shoulders. 

“Yours,” Michael offers because he really wants that to be clear. He thinks he may not have communicated that well last time and it was a fucking misery. He won’t make that mistake again. “That’s what I am.” He punctuates this statement by giving into a strange but gnawing impulse his cheek on the smooth black fabric of Alex’s slacks. It soothes something itchy in his brain, makes him feel calmer and warmer in the space where his joints connect, like his body his held together just a little looser but more solidly, and he idly wonders if this is how cats feel all the time. If it is, then their behavior makes a lot more sense. 

“Okay.” Alex agrees and Michael can hear the faint smile wrapped around his concession. “That’s a kind of something I guess. You’re mine.”

Being Alex’s involves being laid out on the thin mattress, a spring digging into his hip. Being Alex’s involves gentle pressure his nose against his cheek and his breath fanning against his face. Being Alex’s are careful hands undoing the buttons of his shirt with chipped nails and stroking over collarbones before sliding down his chest and around to stroke his lower back. Being Alex’s is being held, safe with arms twined around his waist with the Walgreens bag resting patiently beside his ear, the thin plastic rustling tauntingly at even the slightest movement.

Michael doesn’t let himself think about the fact that he’s never been held like this before. He could, of course, muse on how no one has ever taken care of him like this, let him just rest in their embrace, protected and cared for, and how goddamn unfair the fucking universe is for doing that to him but he’s too busy enjoying the actual experience to dwell on that bitterness. There’s no room to live in that pain when the refuge Alex has created takes him Down differently. 

This time is nothing like the headfirst dives he’s experienced in the past. Now Alex’s soft touches and the gentle cage of his arms have Michael falling Down slowly, like he’s sprawled on his back in a warm pool, floating almost much as he is sinking as he’s pulled by nothing so much as his own weight and the change in surface tension. In the times that he’s dreamed about taking an EVA (which range from a lot since the idea of astronauts were introduced in second grade science, before he was even able to articulate his need to get to into the dark of space, to pretty much daily after foster care movie nights filled with Star Wars, The Last Starfighter, Flight of the Navigator, Lost in Space, Apollo 13 and Titan AE before he was finally sent back to Roswell made him dream of reaching space the human way, and then not at all, not even once, in the last week since Rosa Ortecho died), he imagined being in space might be like this, a weightlessness combined with a clumsy clunkiness in his hands and legs that made moving through the room’s shadows strange and…well, the word that comes to mind is alien but that’s not exactly right because when Alex has the ability to make Michael feel more like a human being than anyone else on Earth. 

Michael is actually getting impatient with the slow descent. It’s glorious but lying still under Alex’s exploration of his bare skin is it’s own kind of of service, to give his stillness when nothing about him ever stops moving easy is a torture of a kind he never imagined for himself because where Alex is touching him is bliss but where he’s holding himself passive is goddamn agony. He loses a little time in the give and take of giving himself to Alex like this, cartwheeling through the hot pressing place in his brain that creates spontaneous gravity wells of joy in response to his surrender before he finally moans in frustration and loses himself down the funnel of a particularly deep one that spits him out into agitated need instead of numb elation and he loses his control and finds himself powerless to do anything but grab Alex’s hair and drag his beautiful wet mouth into a thirsty kiss. 

Alex exhales a pleased laugh into the kiss even as he opens to Michael and meets his tongue with his own. He laughs and it echoes against Michaels teeth as they slot their faces together. Alex pulls him forward by the hips just like he did the first time, firm and sure and happy and he laughs as he nips Michael lower lip - real honest laughter for the first time since his father burst the bubble of their intimacy a week ago. It’s the hottest thing Alex could do right now and Michael moans again at the effervescent taste of it. It’s air after suffocating on their mutual misery for days. 

Alex is so good at kissing him. He makes Michael (almost) forget that his hand hurts when he’s kissing him with the way he touches his everywhere, at once, like his hands are kissing Michael just as much as his mouth. And god, his mouth. Michael could roll over and beg and, well, he’s done both before and would do both if Alex wanted him to. He’s not ashamed. He’s fine with that. He’s fine with anything so long as Alex keeps kissing him, tracing his features like they matter, flooding his brain with the intense wave of want and care and interest(and love he’s sure that has to be love, it’s too sharp and bright and blinding to be anything less than love) flowing into him directly from Alex’s beautiful brain.

What actually happens is that he ends up on his back with Alex spread out on top of him which is nice. Great. Superlative. It’s a lot of good things but mostly its what he needs.He feels better this way than just about any other actually, pushed down, anchored, moored to the world he’s been sentenced to live on by a body on his. Definitely preferred. But doing it with Alex again? Yeah, fuck, definitely a favorite and he’s pretty sure it’s an even split for that being his alien appetites and it being Alex who’s the one weighing him down. When Alex pulls his tongue out of his mouth to breathe and get to work on his jeans, he has just enough coherence to wonder how Alex figured that out. 

The rush of oxygen back to his brain is making him half drunk and he wants to be stupid again. He has brain cells but just enough to want to get them dying again. 

He wants to say something really lame, the kind of cheeseball melodrama ridiculous thing that could come out of one of Ann Evans romance novels he stole when he was thirteen like “Take me” or “I’m yours” because he’s Alex’s, Alex said so and he could, he could just take but come the fuck on. He had to say something else. He still had some dignity. 

“Please?” is what comes out. He hears himself make the request, needy and thin, and, okay. So much for his dignity.

Alex bites him, on the neck, just below his ear, a little bit too hard and it’s so good he whines. It just makes Alex do it again, with suction this time, the kind that will leave a mark and he’s saying it again, “Please” not a request so much as a plea and when Alex gives him what he asks for, Michael decides, ‘fuck his dignity’ and lets himself beg. He wasn’t really using it anymore anyway.

“Yeah, Guerin,” Alex murmurs, over his senseless babbling, mouth brushing against his skin. His clever hands work off their remaining clothes between the press of their bodies even as he presses Michael down into the bed. “That's it.”

It is, though. Being pulled a part and enjoyed by Alex is _it_ , is the thing. He’s losing himself in tearing Alex out of his clothes because he knows that’s what Alex wants him to do and kissing and touching him back because every bit of contact and thrill of pleasure and desire from Alex’s feelings shooting directly into his mind like a second voice tells him it’s what Alex likes. He’s being good by clawing at what he wants until it’s his, all slick hot skin and firm, tense muscle lying between his thighs. He’s falling again, Down to where he needs to as Alex thinks about him and is overcome with a sense of satisfaction and pride at what Michael had given him, done to him, done for him, all undercut with the wanting, grasping hunger of desire for more from him. Jesus Fucking wept, if this was wha Max and Izzy felt for each other, - well, there were things he didn’t want to think about, honestly, if this was how it felt for the twins. But he understood better now, if this molten flood of feeling was what it was like to have access to another self and how they emote at you, he got why no one could or would ever be closer to Izzy than Max or vice versa. No one was going to be closer to him than Alex was now. The distant echoes of his siblings in drastic circumstances didn’t come close. 

“Guerin, do you know?” Alex asks and Michael shakes his head. He doesn’t have any idea what Alex is asking. Does he know how this feels? Does he know how Alex looks right now?Does he know how much he’s wanted to see Alex? Does he know how much he missed Alex? Does he know how much he loves Alex? Does he know how bad he wants Alex to fuck him right now, right fucking now? Yeah, Michael knows the answer to all those questions but he’s not in a place to even considers guessing what was being asked when Alex is finally naked on top of him like he should be and causing his whole existence to melting down. 

The whole thing makes him wish that his power was the ability to freeze time instead of shitty telekinesis. But all he has is two hands to grab on to this moment and hang on. 

He reaches for the bag by his head and fumbles inside as best he can without breaking contact. He knows the feel of a bottle of nail polish remover in the dark, shitfaced, and blind. It’s the container he doesn’t recognize that he grabs for and drops on the slippery duvet cover next to his hip. 

“Please,” he says again and hoping that this will be enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In high school, Alex wore eyeliner, was out as gay, wrote music, and played guitar? Do not come to me and tell me he didn't know Les Mis. We will have to fight.


End file.
